The View from the Back of the Bike

motorcycle racing

That’s the text that I received this afternoon, from a friend in Mexico City. I was surprised and touched that he’d reached out — after all, I was indeed sad today upon reading that Nicky Hayden had passed away. Hayden was struck by a car in Italy last week as he was riding his bicycle, and the motorcycle racing world had been holding its collective breath for the past few days wondering if he would pull through. Today on my lunch break I discovered that the hashtags had drifted from #GoNicky to #RideOnKentuckyKid, and I couldn’t help but read the news and the memorial posts through a haze of tears.

And I wondered a bit at that. After all, I’ve really only gotten into MotoGP in the last couple of years. And it’s not like I was a die hard Nicky Hayden fan. What was this sinking feeling all about? And then the answer arrived in the form of the next text from my friend:

“It’s just as a long time sports fan, I know it can affect you when an athlete dies who you’d become familiar with.”

“Yeah,” I responded. “This is a new sensation for me.”

My friend is one of the biggest sports fans I know, and a great writer. I always felt, as someone who wasn’t a sports fan myself, that I could kinda get it when I read his work. But now, here I was on the inside of it, a fan myself now, and experiencing something I hadn’t anticipated. The excitement and joy of racing, sure, but not this surprising sadness. What is it about the death of a stranger that can set us to feeling adrift like this?

Maybe because athletes are more than just strangers somehow. They are representative of something we wish we could be, a level of greatness we long for. They’re larger than life to us, so when they’re unexpectedly cut down young, it feels like the void is larger, too. To fans, they are our gladiators, the warriors who head out into the ring on our behalf week after week, year after year.

And in this case, part of this helpless, hopeless feeling is the ironic futility of it all: here is a man who has raced motorcycles at 200+ mph for years, and he loses it all riding a damn bicycle, something the vast majority of us have been doing our entire lives. It could happen to any of us, anytime. And the passing of the last American MotoGP champion feels like the end of an era, like we lost more than just a kid from Kentucky.

Ah… there it is. We. Maybe that’s what being a sports fan is really all about. I may be feeling unexpectedly adrift at the death of a motorcycle racer — but I’m not alone. And there’s a comfort to be found in that.

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The MotoGP season kicks off with its only night race of the year. They race under the lights because they’re in Qatar, where daytime temperatures make it just too hot to race safely. So, it was a pretty unusual and unexpected guest that messed with the race weekend this year:

Oh, hi, you didn’t want to ride motorcycles, did you?

Yep, it actually rained hard enough on Saturday that they canceled Qualifying, which is where everyone’s starting grid positions are determined. Instead, the grid would be based on Friday’s Free Practice lap times.

And then on Sunday, just as everyone was in that grid and ready to start, guess who popped back in for an encore drizzle? Everyone trooped back in off the track. Then they trooped back out. Then they took a trial run around the track. Then lots of people stood around shaking their heads. For 45 minutes the MotoGP announcers, who rely on a hyperbolic trove of go-to phrases, tried to make the tedium into an absolute nightmare!

But once the race and the 2017 season was finally underway, it was worth the wait, for a whole slew of reasons.

However, in a burst of speed that surprised everyone, rookie Johann Zarco immediately shot to the front of the pack, shuffling Viñales back to 4th. In his first ever MotoGP race, the former two-time Moto2 champ held off Marquez and the Andreas (Iannone and Dovizioso) with an authoritative lead for the first six laps — until he crashed out of first place. (And yes, the announcers declared it a nightmare.)

Now it was Dovizioso’s turn to blast ahead, while Marquez and Iannone fought for second place — until Iannone crashed out.

Meanwhile, this was going on behind Marquez:

Team Yamaha. Yes, Rossi snuck all the way up here from starting 10th in the grid. This is one of the reasons I love The Doctor.

And then all of a sudden, there was Viñales somehow overtaking Dovizioso and swapping 1st place with him for the last few laps — until yes, he ultimately won the race, making him only the 6th rider ever to win his first race on a new team and bike.

And finally, Valentino Rossi overtook Marquez for a spot on the podium in 3rd — which was an excellent start for the 38-year-old who hadn’t been having the greatest pre-season. I’m eager to see how he does next weekend in Argentina — which will be the 350th race of his career. Yes, that’s yet another world record for him.

And after the race? Viñales was all grace and good sportsmanship, handling victory like a total professional. So yes, look out Marquez. There’s a new kid in town — and he’s got his eyes on your championship. It looks like it’s going to be a mighty exciting MotoGP season.

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I’m way overdue for a blog post. I know this. The whole holiday weekend/start of the semester thing got in the way for a bit. I’m working on one that’s requiring quite a bit of research so it’s taking a while to piece it all together. (And by “research,” I really mean “zooming in on Google maps trying to figure out places F and I have been because so much travel time on the bike blurs together and I can’t for the life of me remember which northern Michigan town is which even though I can remember that somewhere in one of those towns is a bar that doesn’t take credit cards but cures its own Canadian bacon so it’s totally worth it.”)

So while I get those memory knots untangled, here’s a quick MotoGP update.

Take, for instance, the San Marino Grand Prix in Misano this past weekend. Rossi snatched the lead from Lorenzo early on and set the pace for the majority of the race — but then out of nowhere, Dani Pedrosa, who hasn’t had a win since 2015, worked his way up from 8th place, overtaking Rossi in the 22nd lap to win the race. I would have loved to see Rossi win, of course, but if he had to miss out, I’m glad it was to Pedrosa. This way Rossi still earned more points in this race than Marquez (who came in 4th) or Lorenzo (who took 3rd). Plus, it’s just nice to see someone else on the podium for a change, especially another rider who’s been at this for a long time and basically just seems like a nice guy.

Aaaaaand this is where I was going to include a video of race day highlights — but apparently MotoGP doesn’t like that sort of thing, so you’ll have to head to their YouTube channel if you want to see Pedrosa’s surprise overtake of Rossi at the 1:22 mark. Thanks, Dorna.

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We’d planned to go for a ride on Sunday. At least, until we stepped outside and the air already felt warm and soggy at 9 am. I think F was surprised that my response to his “I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I want to go” wasn’t disappointment (after all, he gets to ride a lot more than I do) but rather, “Nope. Me neither.” The thought of being outside in all that gear made me wilt a bit. This was definitely a day to stay indoors. (And hey, bonus! We didn’t end up in a tornado!)

So that afternoon found us somewhere we never are during the day: on the couches in my living room in front of the TV. I’d gone on a bit of an interlibrary loan frenzy at work earlier in the week, and a DVD of a MotoGP documentary was the first thing to arrive. “Yeah, okay, let’s check out the first few minutes and see if it’s any good,” was F’s response when I showed him the case of Fastest.

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I’m sitting here trying to remember what I was doing 20 years ago. Generally speaking, I know that I spent a lot of time in my car that year. Back then there weren’t online classes, so “distance ed” meant living in one area code and driving to classes in another. I was going to library school at Wayne State in Detroit, and living and working in Kalamazoo. I knew I-94 way better than I wanted to. But if I try to think about what August of 1996 specifically looked like, I’ve got nothing. And this particular weekend of August? This specific date, August 18th? Forget it.

I’m also trying to think about just how many twists and turns my life has taken since then, how many different towns, jobs, directions… oof. I’ve never been the type of person to take the shortest distance between point A and point B. My path has meandered a lot, plenty of false starts and redirecting, detours and scenic routes. Some say that I’m fortunate that I’m the kind of person who has a wide array of interests and abilities, directions that my life could go — but really I’ve always envied those single-minded people who have that one thing that they do and do well, for whom there are no other options. The people who know exactly what they are meant for and spend their lives dedicated to becoming a master of their craft.

One of those people knows exactly where he was 20 years ago today: in Brno, Czechoslovakia, standing on the highest step of a MotoGP podium for the first time in his life, celebrating his first win in the world’s premiere class of motorcycle road racing. Continue reading →